


mighty, beautiful

by Vernal



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Gen, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 16:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14405937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vernal/pseuds/Vernal
Summary: Joel dies. Ellie finds her way.





	mighty, beautiful

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [we thought to build us houses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1312609) by [gatheringbones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatheringbones/pseuds/gatheringbones). 



Joel dies.

She sits with him all night long until his breath starts to come short and hitch and skip. Finally it stops coming at all. When she lets herself listen to the silence left behind she realizes she can hear birds singing.

She's left the concept of minutes and hours behind a long time ago but there's blue coming up in the windows and she sits there on the handstitched pillow beside Joel's cot watching the day come. For all the work she did to insulate the cabin there's still no keeping out the birdsong, and in the years since the city they've only gotten louder.

She looks down at Joel hoping he'll look like he's at rest but he looks exactly like he did a few minutes ago only now he's not moving. Like one of the sculptures in Boston of men in wars she doesn't know the names of.

She looks out the window again and the light is getting brighter. Then she drags Joel's blanket up over his head and gets up and walks out the cabin door.

 

* * *

 

She goes straight to Tommy's because that seems like the reasonable thing to do but realizes halfway over that it's too early for that. She walks there anyway listening to the distant churn of the turbines under the dam, the water in the spillway. It's spring and there's a kind of warmth in the air that wasn't there a day ago, and she wonders if she can call it summer yet.

She gets to Tommy's and knocks on the door and it takes three sets of three knocks until he opens it to the limit of the chain pegged to the doorframe.

Ellie? he says.

Joel died.

Tommy is tired and it shows, but he opens the door and lets her in anyway. She barely makes it in before the door is locked and chained again. He leans against it and blinks a few times to get the sleep out of his eyes.

What happened? he says.

I don't know. I knew he was going to die but I just wasn't sure when.

Tommy isn't awake enough to realize how far that statement reaches and he only nods. His wife is sleeping at the far end of the room and he glances over Ellie's shoulder to make sure she is still asleep and then looks back.

What are you goin to do? he says.

I think I'm going to go west.

OK. OK.

I'll let you sleep.

OK. You come back in a couple hours then we'll talk, alright?

Okay.

 

* * *

 

She walks back out into morning and the sun's just coming up through the trees and the light is a kind of gold she's only seen on perfect days and movie posters. There's still so many birds. No one else is awake yet but one old man that sits on his porch every morning to watch the sunrise, and he lifts his arm to wave and she waves back.

 

* * *

 

She makes it back to the cabin for long enough to grab her rifle and a canteen and then heads out past the gate and into the forest. They've cut it back a ways over the years to build more houses and more fires but it's grown faster than they've cut it, thicker and denser and taller. Even when she was young she doesn't remember anything like it. There's pools from the last rains a few days ago and she surprises a few frogs on her way through. They've already laid egg sacs along the few twigs poking into the water and she can't help but wonder if the water will linger long enough for them to survive.

She follows the same trail through that she's followed for years and the sun rises and rises until it's full and bright and hot and she's sweating under her shirt. No wind. The birds haven't stopped singing but it's not as loud as earlier.

She isn't worried about clickers any more, or bandits or wild animals or anything else. It's been years enough that they've rotted or died off or grown passive and she's learned to be cautiously optimistic when she goes out. She still carries her rifle because she's never considered that she might stop, but she hasn't had to use it for years except to hunt. When she thinks about it she thinks that it's strange that that isn't a bigger deal, but it happened slowly enough that it's no surprise.

 

* * *

 

She gets to the edge of the southern treeline around midday and sits at the edge of a small cliff that looks over the river that runs out of the dam. It's slowed down from the last time she saw it, swollen with snowmelt and recent rain, but still fast enough to be dangerous to swim in. 

She thinks she might say something for Joel there to honor him somehow or let him know that she's doing OK if he can hear her from wherever he was. But she never believed in either and so instead she takes the rifle from her lap and shoulders it and aims over the trees and fires.

The birds scatter below her and whatever ones were singing stop. She lets the rifle down into her lap again and watches and listens. Her ears are ringing but she's half deaf now anyway and it doesn't make much of a difference.

In older days if she'd have fired a shot the guards at the dam would have sealed the gates and taken up arms and everyone in the town would have barricaded themselves in their homes. If there were bandits they might have followed the noise and found the town and if there were clickers they might have done the same. Joel would also have taken the rifle out of her hands and cursed her for wasting a round. Instead there's only a small flock of disoriented birds.

She taps on the buttstock of the rifle a couple times and then stands up.

You see that Joel? she says. That's the kind of world we live in now.

 

* * *

 

She takes the long trail back, back along the river where she keeps the rifle on her other side to shield it from the spray but lets it cool her off in the sun. One of her boots is starting to give up at the heel and she can feel a burn starting on the back of her neck but she doesn't care. She's glad to be there.

She reaches the town just as the sun's starting to dip down again and she can hear the turbines working and the vendors at the small market yelling, and she forgets for a moment about the body in the cabin, about her future, and just thinks about what someone said to her all the time on days like this.

It's a mighty beautiful day.

**Author's Note:**

> I was reading gatheringbones's _we thought to build us houses_ earlier today and I had a sense of a moment that I just had to get down. This is what came out of it.
> 
> Comments always appreciated.


End file.
